


hanging like mistletoe

by manthepan



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, References to sex but nothing graphic, Secret Santa Fic, Upside down kisses, peter and quentin work at Stark industries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21959017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manthepan/pseuds/manthepan
Summary: Peter tries out a new invention to make his feet more sticky and gets stuck on Quentin's ceiling.
Relationships: Quentin Beck/Peter Parker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	hanging like mistletoe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Themillenniumpeacock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themillenniumpeacock/gifts).



> This is my Secret Santa present for themillenniumpeacock (Celeste) and it was soooo much fun to write! This is my first published quinpeter work so im highkey nervous > <; 
> 
> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Quentin usually gets back around 4 or 5 if the day’s gone well. Later if he gets slammed or has a breakthrough and needs to get it out of his brain. Today is one of those days.

Peter comes in and gets right to work. While he’s at Stark Tower, he tries not to let the pet projects on his suit get in the way of actual work. So when he unloads a backpack worth of scribbled blueprints, plans, notes and random bits of equipment he’s put together, Peter’s so excited he can barely sit still.

His most recent investment is a chemical solution he can incorporate into the soles of his shoes that help him better stick to surfaces. As he is, it’s mostly his hands that stick and only if he gets a solid footing, do his feet stay planted. Right now, the prototype is just a balm in a tiny glass jar that needs a proper test. Peter brought over his thickest pair of fluffy socks to try it with. Through these, his feet can stick fairly well on their own but he wouldn’t bet standing against the side of the Empire State Building on it. It could have been made stronger but Peter didn’t want to get himself stuck anywhere. And, even if he did, he has a solvent in his backpack--

He forgot it at the Tower. That’s fine, since the formula is diluted, worst case is it’ll wear off in about a minute or so and he can try again tomorrow when he’s back in his lab.

Peter pulls on his socks, opens the balm, uses a tongue depressor he took from May’s first-aid kit and lathers it on the bottoms of his feet.

“Stinks…” Smells like old used gum and rubber.

Okay, that’s on. Next, he leaps right from where he sits at Quentin’s coffee table onto his ceiling. The balm seeps through Peter’s socks despite how thick they are and he groans. It doesn’t feel all that great squishing between his toes. Like he stepped in snot.

He walks a few paces until he’s almost to the kitchen when his right foot is a little harder to lift. Oh, that’s good. That means his stickiness level has been increased. Sweet! But then, as he’s nearing the doorway into the kitchen, Peter can’t lift his left foot up at all. As soon as he notices this, he tries to jump down but absolutely cannot. He can’t even take his socks off--

Oh, no. Oh, no! He’s--!

_ “Stuck?” _ **** Quentin’s voice, and how tickled he sounds over Peter’s speakerphone, makes him wince..

“Ye-Yeah… I, uh. Yeah…” Thank God for K.A.R.E.N. in his watch. Siri wouldn’t have heard his voice from inside his bag and all the way over here.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Peter can tell Quentin’s trying not to laugh and while it’s a strong stab to the gut of his ego, it’s really good to hear the smile in his voice. It’s been more long days than short recently at work and while there’s nothing Peter loves more than having takeout, watching The Mandalorian and falling asleep after a quickie, Quentin hasn’t been smiling or laughing all that much. It hits Peter somewhere warm and fuzzy to know his boyfriend is smiling, even if he isn’t there to see it.

“And the spray to get you down is--”

“--Is in the lab on my floor, yeah…”

It’s quiet on Peter’s end while Quentin snorts and cackles.

“I don’t, uh,” Peter begins warily. “I don't suppose you could grab it before you leave?”

“Ohh, no. No way.”

Not because Quentin actually can’t, but because there’s no way he’s going to make things easy for his impulsive, spider boyfriend. Now, or any other time.

Peter nods sharply once. “Figured.”

If there’s one thing Quentin Beck wants to see, it’s Peter Parker stuck to his ceiling without any way of getting down.

Well, there's a way, Beck concedes. It just won’t be happening any time soon. He chuckles as Peter whines from a distance.

“I’ll be home in, like, 45 minutes. Can you make it that long?”

“I don’t really have much of a choice, man.”

Beck chortles. “I’ll see you in a little bit. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

…

…

“ _ You _ have to hang up, Quentin!!”

“Ha-ha! Bye.”

Then the call ends.

There’s very little Peter can do now that he’s rightfully cemented in place. He swings up a few times and sticks his hands onto the ceiling just to get some of the blood out of his skull. He goes over the formula for the balm in his mind several times and can’t figure out why it’s  _ this _ strong. Ugh, this is just  _ great. _

Pulling on his own legs doesn’t work, trying to jump makes his knees pop and prying at his toes makes his skin feel like it’s stretching. The paint won’t even come off and spare Peter the last remnants of his pride.

“K.A.R.E.N?” Peter releases his hands and lets himself sway.

“How are you doing, Peter?”

“Has it been 45 minutes, yet?”

“It has been four minutes.”

“ _ UUUUUGH!!! _ ”

\---

The drive home isn’t entirely calm. There is a lingering worry that heavies Quentin’s foot on the gas pedal. He knows any mess Peter gets himself tangled in is never an easy fix. Things with Peter can’t ever be so simple. Sure, Quentin is concerned his boyfriend will be stuck to his ceiling forever but not so much that he doesn’t want to use this as a lesson why you don’t do experiments on yourself when you’re home alone.

If things really do seem hopeless, Peter’s solvent is a half hour drive away and everything will be fine.

And, really, can you blame him for wanting to bask in the glory that is Peter Parker’s self-inflicted embarrassment? When his cheeks flush so pink that it gets to his ears.

Beck gets home and immediately spits into a laughing fit.

Peter can’t help but join in. He must look ridiculous.

“You’re on the  _ ceiling _ !” Quentin wheezes as he staggers further indoors. “You’re such an idiot!”

Peter rubs his hands over his face and pushes his hair back against his skull only for it to bounce toward the floor again. “Yeah…”

He watches Quentin take his shoes off, hang his jacket and grin until his canines flash as he approaches.

They cross their arms at the same time.

“What have you tried?” Quentin asks, visibly amused by how he has to look down, more than usual, to maintain eye contact.

“Trying to jump down, mostly,” Peter replies with way more confidence than he should.

Quentin steps in and does him a favor by tucking Peter’s shirt into his jeans, but not before leaving a lingering kiss right above Peter’s belly button. The helpless yelp he gets is worth Peter shoving him back.

“Hm,” The older man hums as he looks up to Peter’s feet.

“Can you go in my bag and get one of my web shooters?”

Quentin lightly cocks a brow and does as he's asked, standing behind Peter now to give him room to do...whatever it was. Peter hooks the tech up to his wrist and connects a web to the far wall and tries to pull. Beck lets this go on for a few seconds until Peter lets out a strained “Ow--”

“Okay, you’re gonna dislocate something. Let’s try something a little more intelligent, shall we?”

Peter groans and snaps his shooter free of the web, it and the boy fall limp.

“I have some acetone, vinegar, bleach, I think paint thinner and…” Quentin quickly takes inventory of his small workshop in the guest room. Peter spies his boyfriend’s sharp teeth again through a wry smile. “A soldering iron.”

Peter scrambles to grab at Quentin until he climbs hand over hand up Quentin’s front, arching his back more and more as he goes. “N-Nooo no, no, no!”

Quentin indulges himself and kisses Peter quickly. “Kidding. I’ll go get the other stuff.” And he takes his leave.

“I don’t actually believe you!” Peter calls.

“I’m not gonna burn your little piggies, promise!”

Beck comes back with an armful of containers and jugs. First they try the acetone and all that does is make Peter light-headed, which he didn’t really need help with to start, and dissolve the top coat of paint on Quentin’s ceiling. This is how they learn that the paint thinner probably won’t work either because the glue has formed a varnish over the paint and further bonded it to the plaster beneath it.

Nothing works. Peter seriously considers the soldering iron.

He groans, frustrated and it ends in a small half growl, half shout.

Quentin laughs through his nose, squatting down to get on Peter’s eye level.

“You’re okay, sweetie. We’ll get you down.”

Something about that pet name in particular feels condescending and does nothing to improve Peter’s mood.

“Can you just go get my stuff? Please?” Peter’s hands are scrubbing over his face. Quentin catches one and kisses Peter’s knuckles.

“You got this. You can figure it out. You made the stuff, you can figure out how to dissolve it.”

“I did!” Peter shouts, swinging a bit as he gestures. It knocks his hand out of his boyfriend’s hand, making Beck pout. “And you can go get it! But you’re not because you hate me.”

Quentin laughs at that, knowing Peter isn’t being serious. “What’s the stuff made of?” He’s asking to get Peter’s mind going. He can’t think straight if he’s flustered and angry.

“The same kind of stuff my webbing is but I changed it up a little. I wanna turn it into a thread to put into my suit that I can kinda turn on and off like my regular stickiness. But I haven’t gotten that far because this was just to see if it stuck at all!”

“You think you should have waited until I got home? Or done it at work?” Quentin prompts as he finger-combs some shallow tangles out of Peter’s hair.

“Mr. Stark doesn’t want me using Intern Time for hero stuff.”

Quentin sighs, annoyed. A rule put in place by the world’s biggest hypocrite. How many times has Beck walked in on Tony literally wrist deep inside his own chest, tinkering with his power core?

> _ “It’s not what it looks like.” Total deer in the headlights. _
> 
> _ Quentin deadpanned. “Y’know, when people get heartburn, they usually just take Tums.” _

“You shouldn’t experiment on yourself when I’m not around, babe.”

‘Babe’ feels better in Peter’s chest than ‘sweetie’. Probably because of how Quentin’s voice drops when he says it.

“Yeah…”

Quentin can’t resist that defeated grimace, that muttered admission of fault, so he leans in and kisses Peter long and sweet. Upside down kisses feel odd. Not bad, just different. Silly, almost. They kiss again just because.

“Your webs or biodegradable, right?” Quentin coaches. It was one of the best ideas Peter had early on in the production stages of his newest suit. It’s not a great look weeks after Spider-Man’s been somewhere that there's still little wisps of his webbing stuck on buildings and windows and lamp posts. Now, they’re great food for anything that likes something with a seaweed base. Seagulls mostly.

“This is made of the same stuff as your webs?”

“Yeah.”

“What kills seaweed?”

“Pretty much anything we just tried, probably. It’s not  _ just _ made of seaweed, Beck.”

‘Beck’ means Peter’s getting annoyed and short.

“I know, but it’s a good place to start. What’s in the solvent?”

Peter lists off synthetic enzymes and chemical mixtures that definitely didn’t exist six months ago. Needless to say, it’s nothing they can make in Quentin’s apartment.

“Herbicide should work, we can mix it with--”

“Do you have that stuff that cleans sinks? The grainy stuff?”

“Ajax?”

“Yeah!”

“No?”

“Go get some! And, uh, leave the acetone. Get lemon juice, lime juice and tomato juice.”

Quentin sits back as Peter goes through an entire grocery store worth of chemical compositions. He’d kiss him if it wouldn’t for sure derail his train of thought.

“You get all that?”

Quentin gets up and goes to Peter’s bag and delivers Peter’s phone. “Text it to me.”

“Okay. Oh, and Reese’s Pieces.”

Quentin tucks his chin in confusion and creases his brow.

Peter looks sheepish. “I’m hungry...”

_ God, I love you. _ “On it.” Quentin makes for the door, redresses for the cold and takes his keys from their key bowl. Peter should have known what was coming by that look on his boyfriend’s face. “Hang in there.”

“Oh, my God!  _ LEAVE!” _

Quentin sways with laughter as the door closes behind him.

To kill time, Peter has K.A.R.E.N playback his verbalized notes on his current project. Might as well get some work done. Then he uses his webs to fetch his bag and uses webbing to stick his notebooks and calculator around him. Granted, it’s not the most effective position to brainstorm but with all the blood pooling in his skull, it might be easier.

\---

Quentin comes home with both arms burdened with grocery bags. Peter is crouching and there’s balled up papers on the floor under him. He’s got his earbuds in, a pen in his mouth, both hands keeping their own notebook open and a little dance going on to whatever music he’s listening to.

By Peter’s lack of reaction, Quentin guesses he’s in his zone. Quentin’s walked in on this scene more than a few times and it just gets cuter and cuter. 

He sets the groceries down as quietly as he can before taking his coat and shoes off. Then he just watches and settles into a comfortable smile. His little genius. Peter could run this city if he wanted. The entire world, really. Like Tony. It’s a marvel to witness his process; having his exclusive E.D.I.T.H glasses replay parts of a demo while the A.R.I--Quentin’s newest invention and best thing Stark Industries has put out in half a decade-- module stuck by his feet displays a 3D model of Peter’s blueprints.

Not to get totally cheesy but Quentin really could spy on Peter like this for hours. For posterity and a new, adorable lock screen, Quentin takes a quick picture. Then, he opens and closes the front door with enough force to snap Peter out of his own mind and look up.

“Oh!” he remarks as he takes one earbud out. “Hey!”

“Working?” Quentin asks knowingly.

Peter gives a shallow, maybe a little embarrassed, laugh. “Yeah. Figured I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“Ready to get this show on the road and off my ceiling?”

“Heh, yeah.”

It’s a quick process getting Peter’s supplies back in his bag and then Quentin is mixing random liquids into a salad bowl that has to be putting out radioactivity at this point.

“Okay, now put the rag in it and give it to me,” Peter’s been handing out a lot of orders for someone whose fault all of this is.

Once effectively soaked, Peter pushes Quentin’s now thoroughly ruined washcloth against his feet, causing run off to drop down his legs. “It tingles. That’s a good sign.”

“Not really,” Quentin warns. “You sure this is gonna work? If you get chemical burns and stay up there, we’re really fucked.”

“No, no, it’ll be fine.” Peter’s reassuring voice isn’t very reassuring.

Quentin watches, concerned and jolts every time Peter makes a noise like he’s in pain. Really, he’s just trying to wiggle his toes.

Then, finally, one big toe is freed.

“Ah! Quin! Hey, I think I’m getting unstuck!”

The older man beams. “Nice. Nice job.”

“Oof...still tingling.”

“Jump in the shower when you’re down, you’ll be fine.”

Once foot is totally free in about ten minutes and there’s a victorious shout from them both. Quentin readies to catch his boyfriend who probably won’t have enough time to spin around and land on his feet.

Peter expects the other foot to take ten more minutes so when he drops like a bowling ball after a few seconds, he yelps and latches onto Quentin. They both crumble to the floor with a combined; “Shit!”

“I’m unstuck!”

“You’re unstuck!”

Peter laughs and gives Quentin a proper hug and kiss.

“Let’s not do that again, baby.” Quentin breathes out. Peter just giggles.

\----

Quentin wakes up the next morning to Peter calling for him. The panic in his voice sends Quentin’s nerves on edge immediately so he’s up and on his knees in a flash. Half the comforter is launched onto the floor. Peter’s nowhere in sight.

His head whips around. Peter sounded close. “Honey?” On top of all this, he didn’t bother getting dressed after sex last night so not only is Beck chaos-ready wtih fight or flight, but also chilly from his nakedness.

“Up here…”

Quentin looks right above him and Peter is on the ceiling. Again. This time his hands and feet are both sticking.

Beck deflates and lets his head fall all the way back. “Oh, my Go-- Are you  _ kidding me?!” _

Peter looks pathetic for a beat before snickering. His hands lift free and he stands straight, sending him directly into Quentin’s space. Their eyes follow each other.

“Yeah,” Peter chimes through a final giggle. Then he kisses Quentin’s scowling lips.

Quentin snarls through his growing smirk and yanks Peter down onto the bed, which wouldn’t have happened if Peter didn’t want it to.

“You’re grounded,” Quentin threatens against Peter’s neck before kissing him there.

His beard tickles Peter’s sensitive morning skin so he laughs. His arms and legs circle around his boyfriend. He’s wearing a pair of Quentin’s sweats and their tussle nearly pulls them down. “For how long?”

“Until the apartment stops smelling like a toxic waste dump.”

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you guys think! you can find me on twitter @JaySuoh


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